Mark Brewer

Inside a Seabird Colony: Tracking the Spread of Avian Influenza Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has caused unprecedented mortality in wild birds and led to the culling of millions of poultry worldwide. Since 2021, this ongoing global outbreak has severely...

Check out this new publication from our Dave Ewing, on tracking the spread of #AvianInfluenza inside a #seabird colony.

📰 Read the summary: www.bioss.ac.uk/case-studies...
📕 Read the full paper: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@daveewing.bsky.social @animalecology.bsky.social

Kind reminder that the registration deadline for the SEFARI Science for Life Lecture 2025 is today! tinyurl.com/mv3smw57

"Giving life to your science so it impacts the transformation of agriculture, environment and society" by David G Farquhar FRGS

🗓️Friday Oct 24th
⏰12:30 - 3:30pm
📍Edinburgh

Left to right: Professor Calum Semple, Dr Gillian Mitchell, Dr Amanpreet Kaur, Dr Grant Henderson and Professor Mat Williams.

🎉 A HUGE congratulations to the winners of the ENRA conference poster session

🥇Oana Petre @rowettinstitute.bsky.social
🥈Amanpreet Kaur @hutton.ac.uk
🥉Gillian Mitchell @moredunfoundation.bsky.social

The early career researcher prize went to Grant Henderson @bioss.bsky.social

Science for Life Lecture Science for Life Lecture hosted by Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland

📢 Last chance for the 2025 SEFARI Science for Life Lecture organised by @bioss.bsky.social!

How can we better deploy science to create impact? - David G Farquhar FRGS

🗓️Friday Oct 24th
⌛12:30 - 3:30pm
📍Edinburgh Training and Conference Venue

Register by tomorrow! 17th Oct: tinyurl.com/mv3smw57

Stewart Lee: The thugs have taken my flag. So I’ve taken theirs What do you do with a lot of cheap banners hanging from motorway bridges once you’ve torn them down?

🔗 Read the full piece

www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...

A nice thread highlighting key findings from our new paper estimating parameters of #HPAI in subsequent outbreaks in common terns. We developed a Bayesian inference approach to infer parameters from just carcass counts. #seabirds #statisticalecology #diseaseecology

doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Research impact?
#highered #university

One path to a successful career as a columnist is to be repeatedly wrong. Not to have unique takes on matters of opinion, but confident declarations proven wrong by events. If you can condescend to people proven right no matter how often you are wrong, the most prominent media would like to pay you.

Science for Life Lecture Science for Life Lecture hosted by Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland

Join us at the SEFARI Science for Life Lecture 2025!

Giving life to your science so it impacts the transformation of agriculture, environment and society
by David G Farquhar FRGS

🗓️Friday Oct 24th
⏰12:30 - 3:30pm
📍Edinburgh Training and Conference Venue

Register by 17th Oct: tinyurl.com/mv3smw57

Wikipedia:
▫️Free
▫️Sources at the bottom
▫️Full edit history
▫️Discussion page to check controversies
▫️Openly stated editing policies
Academia: "This isn't trustworthy!!"

AI:
▫️Literally none of the above and, usually, the complete opposite
Academia: "I guess we have to embrace this!"

President's blog: Reflections on a record breaking RSS Conference

960+ people. 4 days. 1 unforgettable conference. Thanks to everyone who made #RSS2025 such a standout event!

Our president John Aston shares some reflections, including a timely reminder that transparency is key to trust in official stats 👉 rss.org.uk/news-publica...

We're heading to the @royalstatsoc.bsky.social International Conference this week in Edinburgh! 📊

Our team are contributing to the exciting programme by leading 11 sessions, giving 11 talks, and presenting 2 posters.🎤🗣️

Hopefully see you there!
#RSS2025Conf #RSS2025 #Statistics

Global tracking of marine megafauna space use reveals how to achieve conservation targets The recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect, conserve, and manage at least 30% of the world's oceans in an effort to halt the loss of important mari...

BioSS researcher Dr Ana Couto worked with a team of international scientists who tracked over 100 marine species of large vertebrates to identify the most critical locations for conservation in the global ocean. 🌍🌊

Read more here: www.bioss.ac.uk/case-studies...

#conservation #marinebiology

Some terrible chaffing there.

Article on BBC news. Title: AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs Description: Two new potential drugs have been designed by AI to kill drug-resistant bacteria, in a major Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.

I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪

The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs.

That is *pure fantasy*.

Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.

Registration is now open to attend the one-day workshop on “Statistical Challenges in the Agri-Environment Sector” organised jointly by the BIR (British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society) and NABES (UK Network of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statisticians).

I'm not saying you can't generate a hypothesis from data.

I'm just saying that generating a hypothesis from the entirety of human knowledge that preceded your data is a much safer bet.

Our Iain McKendrick is at the Royal Highland Show 2025 to launch a new public information film. It warns about the risks from bringing animal and plant products into Scotland. 🧀🥩✈️

🎦Watch here: www.epicscotland.org/resources/an...

@epicscotland.bsky.social @planthealthscot.bsky.social @hutton.ac.uk

The latest Household Costs Indices (HCIs) are out: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/infl...

March HCI inflation: 2.6% (same as CPI)

But the detail matters:
Non-retired: 2.8%
Retired: 2.1%
Renters: 3.6%
Owners: 1.8%

📑Read more in our policy briefing
rss.org.uk/RSS/media/Fi...

Ecologists’ endless quest for automatic inference
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/05/28/e...

Congratulations to joint @srucnews.bsky.social / @bioss.bsky.social PhD student Claire Stainfield and senior statistician Dr. Thomas Cornulier who both delivered amazing talks at last week's 2025 Pint of Science UK festival in Aberdeen! #pint25 #scicomm #pintofscience #bioss #sruc

Scotland's National LIDAR scan underway! @RESAS funded

🚨WEBINAR🚨
The #PrePAREDProject will host a webinar on 21st May from 12-12:30pm.

This webinar summarises the findings from Report 006: ‘Similarity assessment of offshore wind farms within UK marine habitats’ and will host a live Q&A.

Register here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/eae7d8...

Check out this exciting new BioSS paper! 📣🐑

#animalhealth #parasitology #sheep #newpaper

Welcome to BioSS, Grant, we're delighted to see you here too!

I've never experienced anything like this in my life, where people keep telling me that "we have to use AI or else we'll be left behind" but they don't actually tell me exactly what problem they are hoping to solve with the "AI" or how we would know it was useful. But we must use it! Apparently.

Of course, "data collection" could include making use of existing data sets, so making sure existing data are made freely available, with appropriate publicity, is part of that.

Finding a problem for your data is just like finding data for your methodology. All parts of the scientific process - problem formulation, data design and collection, analysis and inference, conclusions and dissemination - should be done by a collaborative team, working together from the outset.

Yet ANOTHER right-wing populist finds themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Contrarian grifters: "The global system is conspiring to prevent these people from taking up their rightful place as the leaders of nations.

Everyone else: No, far-right populism just tends to attract criminals.

To be held in Lübeck, Germany on 24-26/9/2025 (virtual attendance possible). Further details at www.biometrische-gesellschaft.de/arbeitsgrupp... (2/2)